Baba Yaga rapped the pestle against the mortar. “Very little forest these days to tempt lost travelers. One must eat.”
“The dead?” Patrick asked, failing to keep the disgust out of his voice. He could’ve done without watching her eat a corpse.
Baba Yaga ignored him, busying herself with sorting the extra bone from the mortar on an empty table in the rear of the shop.
Patrick pressed a hand to his chest as the soulbond drew sharp and tight. Jono was a distant presence he could sense drawing closer with every breath he took.
Find me.
The answering tug in his soul eased the tension in Patrick’s shoulders, but not by much.
“So.” Hermes wandered away from the table and back to Patrick. “I hear you lost the Morrígan’s staff.”
“We didn’tloseit,” Patrick snapped.
“You were in the same location and never got your hands on it.”
“Doesn’t mean we lost it.”
Patrick was not going to admit defeat to Hermes, even if—yes,technically—they might have lost track of the staff. And now it was in the hands of a necromancer and a god who had no right to it.
“Ilya is in possession of the staff. He’ll give it to Peklabog if he hasn’t done so already,” Patrick said.
Hermes rolled his eyes. “And whose fault is that?”
“It’s been out of the Morrígan’s hands for what? Over a century? Don’t blame me because you gods lost it first.”
“It wouldn’t be a problem if your family hadn’t done such damage over the years.”
“I’m doing what you want.”
“Not well enough.”
Patrick raked a hand through his hair, shaking loose stone dust he’d carried with him out of the Catacombs. “Peklabog had an altar down there before Baba Yaga dismantled it. He’s been accepting sacrifices.”
“He’s been keeping bodies and souls,” Hermes corrected.
Patrick linked his hands behind his neck and stared up at the ceiling. “The staff isn’t his.”
“Doesn’t mean he won’t try to force it to accept him.”
“How?”
“One must use artifact to own,” Baba Yaga said as she floated back over to them on her mortar.
“It’s not part of his myth.”
Hermes tilted his head, gold-brown eyes becoming half-lidded. “Do you really think that matters when your father is busy creating his own?”
Myths had a core of truth, and while the stories sometimes changed, Patrick didn’t think they could changethatmuch. The Morrígan was a goddess of war and fate, and the dead were her purview as much as Peklabog’s in a way. But the staff belonged to her, and Patrick didn’t believe the goddess would let anyone keep what was rightfully hers.
Not without a fight.
“If Ethan wants it, he’ll bargain with Peklabog for it. Or he’ll just take it.”
Someone banged rapidly on the front door to the apothecary shop. The soulbond settled in Patrick’s soul the way it always did when Jono was nearby, and Patrick let out a sigh of relief.
The door to the shop swung open on its own. Jono, Sage and Wade hurried inside, and the door shut behind them with a quiet click. Jono scowled at Hermes before muscling his way between the god and Patrick. Warm hands framed Patrick’s face and tilted his head up. The motion dislodged more stone dust, and he sneezed.
